


original lifeline

by buckstiel



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Introspection, M/M, Post-Azure Moon, Trauma, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23084833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckstiel/pseuds/buckstiel
Summary: A week after his coronation, Dimitri begins the trek to Duscur with Dedue to initiate reconciliation efforts. The journey is long, and the war is not far behind them.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro
Comments: 1
Kudos: 50





	original lifeline

**Author's Note:**

> every day is deduesday!!!! every single day
> 
> title from "third eye" by florence and the machine
> 
> thank you thecutestofborg for the beta. and also for letting me drag you into this pit.

The road to Duscur, pitty and overgrown from years of disuse, jostled even the sturdiest of carriages pouring out of Fhirdiad in the royal convoy. In the city, there was a rhythm to the bumps and jolts, how the wheels pulled along the cobblestone--it could be learned, leaned into. Past the Tailtean Plains with the sharp peaks of Sacre Gwenhwyvar blunted by the haze of a snowstorm, each lurch caught Dimitri by surprise. An invisible grip tightened around his throat, blood turned to permafrost.

Some part of him expected an ambush. His head wore the crown, had worn it for a full week, and what was the crown but a flaming target?

“You don’t have to wear it all the time.” Before the coronation, all the Blue Lions had gathered in his antechamber, shooing away his official handlers to fuss over him themselves having sensed the thick tension curling into the hallway from the gaps in the doors. It was Ingrid who said this as she held the horrible gleaming thing out for him to take. “It’s just for today. You know, tradition and ceremony. It’ll do everyone good to get some of that after the last five years.”

Another rattling jerk. The last hold on his throat hadn’t had the time to loosen and took advantage of the head start.

“Y--Dimitri.”

Across the carriage: Dedue, his knees knocking against Dimitri’s in the limited space, brow folded into that familiar knot of concern.

“You do not look well.”

“I’m fine.”

“If you are feeling ill, we can postpone--”

“No,” he said. Until the tension subsided, he only wanted to screw his eyes shut and wait for it to pass, but he forced them back open, up to Dedue’s own. “This is important.”

The uptick of his eyebrow was the only sign Dedue had swallowed his rebuttals.

It was the same quirk that he’d spotted across the antechamber after Ingrid had given up on the issue of the crown--directed at no one while Dimitri grumbled at every person in the room at the same time, at the whole of Fódlan and the very concept of monarchy.

“Great, that’s wonderful,” Felix said. “Now sit down.” He didn’t wait for Dimitri to listen, taking advantage of a particularly long run-on grumble to nudge him into the awaiting chair. “You’re worse than a bride with cold feet.”

“Am I not marrying Faerghus? Am I not wedding my fate to the kingdom?”

Again Dedue’s eyebrow rose, just slight enough to brush it off as a coincidence. But he wouldn’t. Not with the grimace on Ashe’s face and and the huff from Felix as he maneuvered behind the chair. “Keep that up and you’ll be giving us our first Boar King. What?” he added when the professor pointedly coughed from their self-appointed corner. “Fine. Anyway--I hate to say it, but we can’t send you out there with…”

Dimitri retreated into himself, a half step that fuzzed the bustle around him to something tolerable and let him sit with the pieces of himself Felix likened to tusks. Small, sword-callused hands inspected his hair piece by piece. _The crown was going to burn that bullseye on his skull, a brand he’d never escape._ Sylvain and Mercedes’ blurry faces squinted at him, too close, a makeup brush tapping against her temple in thought.

“The portrait artists are going to want to commemorate this,” Mercedes said, her voice almost underwater. “He should look his best.”

_Whoever wanted King Lambert’s head would want to finish the job. Complete the collection. He should strike first._

“Scars are sexy though,” said Sylvain, and even the chorus of groans rolled through the room like syrup.

The rest of them were in an uproar. About something, assumedly. All the words melded into a low drone, folded around his ears until the whole of him stepped fully back into the room. His breath grew shallow. Even without his heavy cloak he was sweating. Dedue’s gaze over everyone’s heads steady and constant--

“Hey!” Annette, not naturally loud but trying. “I just--” She cast a diluted Wind spell, sending Sylvain stumbling away from his perch, which she quickly took. “I said HEY.”

Finally the droning faded into the distant bustle of the city square on the other side of the walls; Annette glanced around the room, then back to Dimitri, arms stuttering like she’d considered crouching to his eye level before realizing she wasn’t tall enough to do a proper crouch.

“Nobody’s asked _you_ ,” she said. “What do _you_ want?”

He was jerked back to the present by a pair of divots that sent the carriage bouncing, knocking Dedue’s head into the ceiling and pulling half his hair free from its careful hold. Dimitri watched his hands pull the clasp free, work through the new tangles, smooth out the straight swathe of silver until the clasp could return to its rightful place. Methodical in a way Dimitri doubted he himself could ever manage.

He never answered Annette that day. He didn’t need to, not then, not when the question of _what he wanted_ revolved around the choice of boots or hair styles before being thrust into the Kingdom’s seat of power.

“I was reading over the letter Hubert left us,” Dedue said suddenly. “About those who slither in the dark.”

“Is there nothing else we can call them?”

“According to Hubert, no,” he said. “It is quite the mouthful, however, so it should be considered.”

Dimitri nodded. The small window on the side of the carriage offered a peek into an increasingly grey landscape, rocky expanses of dry and dying grasses shifting into a full monochrome in real time.

“If what he said is true, I fear we may find ourselves in a more complicated situation than we originally thought.”

The same had occurred to Dimitri, but he hadn’t let himself dwell on it in the weeks since that battle. “Let’s get through this trip first.”

One step before the next step--he could still hear Petra saying that to herself at the monastery training ground. He tried not to picture her body collapsing around Sylvain’s spear on the streets of Enbarr each time the phrase instinctively leapt to his tongue.

“Something is still troubling you.”

“Not a novel circumstance.” A beat--“I’m sorry, I understand what you were…”

Dedue shook his head. “No need to apologize.” The corners of his mouth curled up, perceptible only to those who could map his face better than their own. It was the face that told him better than any mirror in the aftermath of Myrddin how far he’d truly sank in those bloody five years.

And yet--he still had a foot there, ankle deep. The sole of his boot riddled with holes so the gore could stain his skin--

No. There was no use following that trail spiraling into the dark. Find something else to latch onto, grasp it until your knuckles turned white: not advice he’d expected to receive from Sylvain, not when Sylvain had his formal wear drooping off his shoulder as a half-empty mug of ale lolled in his hand. The coronation ball was a grand affair attended by every surviving noble who could afford the trip without pressing the bruise of their grudges into a sicklier purple. Out of those attending he actually knew, only Gilbert was the least bit comfortable, and after an hour the professor led the charge in the Blue Lions sneaking out one by one, at last offering an excuse for the new king to retire for the evening.

Which was how Dimitri found himself boxed in against the wall with Sylvain’s impromptu therapy. “You can’t… you gotta stop yourself when you start getting that way,” he half-slurred. “If I start thinkin’ too hard about how no one sees past my crest, that’s--that’s my whole day. It’s my whole day! So I turn my head around and make myself think about--”

“Ingrid’s grandma,” Felix said, appearing at his side. The usual immaculate mess of his hair had started to sag, but enough of his wits remained to juggle an empty shot glass across his knuckles.

“That was one time--”

And it wasn’t another pothole that yanked Dimitri’s attention back to the present, and it wasn’t a yank as much as it was a gentle slide--this same whistled tune had drifted over their makeshift coronation party too, rising and falling over the chatter and clinking glasses, untraceable in the flurry. Now, though--now ignoring the round purse of Dedue’s mouth was impossible. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from him, how usual creases in his face eased in the melody, how even the jagged scars lining his skin smoothed into something softer.

Dedue caught him staring, grinned, pulled apart the whistling at the seams. Though he didn’t appear to mind, that grin spreading farther than Dimitri had ever seen.

“That was lovely,” he said, quiet.

“It is a traditional song from Duscur.”

“I know.” No one had ever told him as such, but there was nothing else it could have been. “What is it--are there words?”

“I will not sing it for you,” Dedue said, two steps away from hinting at a laugh. “You know my singing is not…”

_Not like Dorothea’s_ \--a refrain from the academy. She didn’t even scream when she fell at Gronder Field. Couldn’t scream, because Ashe’s arrow had pierced her throat.

Dedue cleared his throat, dislodged the memory from its sticking place. “Well,” he said. “It is a ballad of Duscur’s oldest hero, long before the Empire was founded. Mekerth sailed around the coast of Fódlan until she landed in Morfis in search of her missing brother, who had already married into one of the local ruling families. The journey to Morfis tells of adventure: fighting off sea-beasts, tense negotiations with Brigid villages. The letters she receives from home tempt her to return, since crises require extra hands, but she keeps on. Reuniting with her brother is cause for celebration, and also mourning. Mekerth cannot bring him home. The Duscur she will return to will have aged years without her, but still she longs for the familiar hills and shorelines.”

Dimitri pictured Mekerth in his head: as tall as Dedue, with all the grace and definition as the professor, silver hair braided into a complicated knot at the base of her skull. Standing on the shores of Duscur after years of absence, the setting sun revealing the golden touches of her skin as her heart broke at the sight of all that had changed.

Merketh’s face shifted to Dedue’s, and back again, and again, until he couldn’t tell the difference between the two. Dedue had been gone from Duscur far longer than Merketh. Dimitri had heard stories of the wildflowers that overtook the hills while spring rolled through the land--not directly, but by catching pieces of conversations between Ashe and Dedue, and Bernadetta if she dared venture past the threshold of her dorm.

(It was his hands around Areadbhar that brought her end. The red of the memory drenched it to opacity, the only way it could remain in his head without breaking everything further.)

But the wildflowers: those, Dedue deserved. Sitting among them again as the sun sank into its rippled reflection over the sea, the breeze rolling over a field and bringing with it scents other than death and the sharp ozone of magic. Something pleasant, where Dedue didn’t feel obligated to hold his hands in fists.

Suddenly his whole body tensed--the convoy had reached the foothills of the mountains, where the road turned mostly to gravel, and soon the jolts and bumps were a constant. Constant, and yet unpredictable. He could see it now, could smell it, the burning fire arrows piercing each carriage, swords and axes cutting through bone, mages in those horrid beaked masks looming over Dedue and his unblinking stare. The crown’s beacon on Dimitri’s head had led them here.

“Dimitri.”

“ _What_ \--oh.”

There was barely enough space, but Dedue managed, as he always did--the two of them sat now on the same side of the carriage, and a large warm hand dwarfed Dimitri’s in its hold. His thumb rubbed along the closest knuckle, and he could narrow his world down to the consistent pace of that thumb and the heat between their palms, and--also, yes, how tenderly green his eyes were even in this light.

“I was thinking about the time,” Dedue said, “when Mercedes baked a pie from a War of Heroes era recipe.”

It was impossible to forget--the oven she’d used was out of commission for two weeks trying to scrub the charred bits of exploded pie from every exposed surface, and then some. The measurement system, Seteth later explained, had shifted in the thousand years since its recording.

“Everyone thought it was Annette’s doing at first, right?”

“To be fair, there was precedent.”

“How many times when she was cooking with you was there a… an incident?”

Dedue smiled. “I did not think it was a good use of time to try to keep track.”

Another bump sent the carriage tilting long enough for Dimitri’s heart to catch in his throat. Dedue’s hand squeezed tighter as Dimitri found himself burying his head against the taller shoulder beside him. The thumb along his knuckle kept pace, an anchor to keep himself from tipping over into the worst of it.

He thought back to Annette, how she put her foot down before the coronation and could cow or rally any one of them in the cadre with a single, meticulous glance. The Royal School of Sorcery didn’t offer courses in this branch of magic, the kind that could stretch her presence tall enough that it would be foolish not to heed her--she saved Sylvain at least four broken noses, herself untold migraines when Gilbert wouldn’t otherwise relent in his self-flagellation.

Of course every Blue Lion was endeared to her. Some more than others--

“Right after the war,” Dimitri said, only halfway aware he’d done so out loud. “She expressed interest in you, didn’t she?”

Dedue cleared his throat. “I was not aware that you knew about that.”

“Mercedes and Ashe aren’t subtle conversationalists.” The road beneath the carriage wheels had smoothed out, relatively, but Dimitri’s heart still thumped against everything in its way, a fist knocking against all the parts of him that were prone to rattling. He squeezed Dedue’s hand. An experiment. One that might shudder his whole body apart at the seams. “You two got along well.”

That neglected future played out in his head: their entire house crowding into the estate of House Dominic, immaculately decorated in the traditional style of the Kingdom while the bride and groom donned attire more suited to Duscur. The sun cast speckled light through the trees at the peak of their bloom, and it was perfect. Picturesque, the perfect bookend to place at the end of a war.

Yet the thought roiled his stomach with bile.

“I could not provide the amount of devotion she deserved.”

“I’ve told you many times since we retook Fhirdiad. You aren’t a vassal--this concept you had of a life debt has long been paid.” Again he squeezed Dedue’s hand, harder, holding it until he could keep his gaze. “You can live whatever life you choose. I _want_ you to.”

In any other conversation like this, when Dimitri pushed back against the stubborn wall of Dedue’s will, the silent staring would have already broken up into grumbling. Into multiple pieces: fixating on opposite corners of the room, a sudden subject change, relaying one of Alois’ terrible jokes if the moment was desperate and called for it. Dimitri’s stomach rose, crowded his lungs, as if he’d been thrown from his horse and was frozen in the moment he started on the way back down to the earth. Suspended, waiting.

That image of Dedue and Annette at the altar of their wedding cropped up behind his eyes. The carriage wheels below them stumbled on a succession of potholes but he couldn’t be bothered. Annette’s tiny frame was comically small beside her soon-to-be husband, and how could Dimitri want so badly for Dedue something that he also wanted to burn?

“You misunderstand me,” Dedue said finally.

His free hand gently cupped Dimitri’s face before leaning down. Kissing him.

It was supposed to be brief--Dimitri could sense it in the chaste hold of Dedue’s lips, how his fingers still gripped around Dimitri’s hand tensed, anxious. Maybe he thought he’d made a mistake, or maybe he just wanted to test the waters, but answering both was an easy task. Dimitri reached for the back of Dedue’s head, curled his fingers into the hair that was just carefully fixed. This made sense, it made sense. A question posed and quickly solved.

Dimitri’s dull fingernails scraped along the shaved sides of his head, coming around to line his jaw. He pressed further against him, testing borders with his tongue, and Dedue’s breath shuddered into his mouth.

Deep behind his ribs, the part of himself that Felix called the boar fell silent, no footprints leaving a path, for the first time in years. Everything was still--he could think clearly, or as clearly as he could manage after crawling into Dedue’s lap, straddling him, his stoic demeanor unraveling in his hands. And it wasn’t that the boar had lost, given up; but it had no idea how to exist in the face of affection that saw it for what it was and did not waver.

“I don’t deserve you,” Dimitri murmured into the pulse point of Dedue’s neck.

“Let me d--ah, determine that--”

Dimitri pulled back, arms around Dedue’s neck and knees locked next to his hip bones. “You’re a better man than I could ever hope to be.” He brought a hand up to Dedue’s face, tracing the line of his cheekbone, an eyebrow; Dedue leaned into it, eyes fluttering shut.

“I believe…” Dedue said, pressing a kiss to Dimitri’s palm, “...that perhaps you just need more hope.”

“Don’t be absurd.” He kissed him again, open-mouthed from the start, drunk off the small, desperate sounds he tugged forth from the back of Dedue’s throat..

Two boys once stood among burnt fields and dead bodies, too young to be the last men standing but it would have to do--hope said in ten years they would both still live, not necessarily at each other’s side or through a war, surely not counting on their tongues in each other’s mouths. The boar, the reparations owed to restore a land from ruin, they needed the work of their hands, concrete.

The carriage jostled once more on the road, the largest jolt yet. The rucksacks stowed under their seats flew into the air, contents spilling onto the floor as the wheels reconnected with the road. Dimitri barely noticed.


End file.
